Goodbye from AMSO3
 

I've been a member of RL for over 20 years and a paying sponsor for 15 years. I've decided quit being a sponsor. In RL's wisdom thir thanks for providing thousands of dollars in support is to banish user name AMSO3 from RL. Starting next week, AMSO3 no longer be able to post, or PM and my old posts will be deleted. They don't give me the option to pay regular dues and continue with my old user name. SO, my user name going forward will be Morris69, unless they decide I can't even do that.

To all my friends, see you on the other side!

WTF, that is so wrong Jerry. It's borderline extortion.

Exactly. A year ago I went thru this and didn't want to go that route so I paid up. It just doesn't have value for my business for what I paid. We'll see if they are banishing me or just my old user name.

There is 1) a disservice to you especially after being part of the community for so many years and 2) a disservice to the RL community as IB is saying they will delete your old posts. That is valuable technical (and personal) information that will be lost for no apparent reason.

Oh, there's a very apparent reason. It's just a bad one.

They have also jacked up rates

Every year.

Deleting old posts was't in the current "goodby" letter, but it was last year when they were twisting my arm to re-up. We'll see Aug 9th. Thanks for the support, this is a great forum!

This is very wrong. Jerry has provided a lot of good information and support free of charge via RL.

While this forum is private property, I cannot fathom any good business reason to retroactively delete someone who had not been banned.

SAD!

I'm sure the logic goes something like:

As a paying sponsor, you unlock the ability to post certain marketing messages that a nonsponsor cannot post and the fact that those posts are not permissible for a nonsponsor means they have to go when not a sponsor any more and it would be too much trouble to wade through and delete the posts that would be impermissible for a nonsponsor to post so deleting all the posts is the only workable solution for them.

This has as its core an assumption that there remains residual value to the now former sponsor of those prior posts that wasn't priced into the cost of being a sponsor, and/or a belief that people will game the system by creating lots of posts as a sponsor and then not pay but have their sponsor posts remain hanging on the wall, so to speak.

That logic ignores how message boards work, how communities are built, and pretty much every theory on how marketing works.

Hey Jerry Wow this really sucks.
I tried Six Speed as a sponsor (also owned by INternet BRands) for maybe 6 months in 2012. It did not work I paid what I consider to be big bucks at the time and got nothing out of it. I cancelled and they banned me and took down all my previous posts. IN one way i did nor care care because I don't think there are any serious track guys on Six Speed. But it did get me hot under the collar. Seems to me that they totally banned me so I could not even log onto the site. You have helped a lot of the Rennlisters including me. You will be missed.